An oil and gas storage tank sits in the receding flood waters along U.S 34 near Greeley. While the oil and gas industry in and around Greeley was hindered by the flood many companies began immediately on repairs.

An oil storage tank is tipped over in the flood waters near Kersey on U.S 34. Oil and gas companies closely watched the condition of various facilities throughout the county to ensure that no oil is spilled and that facility are quickly repaired.

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Shortly after monsoonal rains pummeled the Colorado mountains in September, things quickly went from bad to worse as flooding rivers washed out roads and bridges, isolating entire communities for two weeks.

But fast-acting crews from area oil and gas companies averted what could have been an environmental disaster in the oil fields of Weld County.

About 1,900 producing wells were in the flood plains of the St. Vrain, Big Thompson, South Platte and Cache la Poudre rivers. Of those, only 13 notable spills were reported in the following two weeks.

The final count was 13 releases of 43,134 gallons of oil and 17 releases of produced water, totaling 26,385 gallons. For context, the volume of oil released is comparable to more than three, standard 300-barrel storage tanks. The amount of produced water released was more than two of such tanks, reported officials from the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.

“For anyone who has been wondering if oil and gas development was safe, you have an industry that does everything it can to be prepared for the unexpected, and there’s very little more unexpected than a flood of these proportions,” said Tisha Schuller, president of COGA. “We prepare for the unexpected, and when it happened, every company from the tiny operators to the largest in Colorado were mobilized before the flooding occurred. They were out there 24/7.”

Though properly permitted to be in a flood plain and their storage tanks being anchored tighter than most infrastructure, operators weren’t taking any chances. Crews were out a full two days prior to the raging waters reaching Weld river banks and began shutting in their wells to prevent unnecessary spills – either remotely or during physical inspections. They didn’t get to them all in those few days, but that didn’t stop them.

Anadarko shut in 675 wells, and had to inspect all of them, plus 2,500 tank batteries that had the potential to spill. Roughly 150 workers were on the ground assessing and repairing the damage for the first two weeks. In all, Anadarko reported seven spills totaling up to 25,200 gallons of oil, or 600 barrels.

“We had helicopters in the air, with operations folks able to determine normal operations and what looks like a facility we needed to look at, and through our automation, which allows us to monitor tank levels and shut in wells remotely,” said Korby Bracken, director of environmental health and safety at Anadarko. “Through that, we put together a list of priority wells to evaluate, and took a look at these, when we were safely able to get to those locations and identify what was going on, we were able to determine if we had lost oil.”

Helicopters were in the air daily, but crews also were getting to flooded sites through amphibious vehicles. If they noticed any spills, they would sop them up with booms or vacuum it out.

Two days before the floods would hit historic proportions, Noble crews were on the ground, too. They shut in 758 wells — only 12 horizontal wells, and most that were only producing an hour a day. Crews also worked to pump as much oil from their tanks as possible. A day later, all the affected Noble wells were under water.

More than 100 Noble employees had been trained in emergency incident management, and they spent the next several days surveying the damage, most of it from debris crashing into existing tanks and other infrastructure.

Noble officials estimated $7 million to $17 million in damage from the floods. Noble had a total of four spills of 8,900 gallons (212 barrels) of oil, and 1,260 barrels of produced water, and all of the company’s infrastructure stayed within in their specific locations.

“Our facilities did what they were designed for and there was a relatively small impact,” said Ted Brown, senior vice president of Noble’s northern region.

In the final tally, most agreed that the reported spills would not affect northern Colorado — in fact they would have washed away with the floodwaters, so diluted that they wouldn’t cause any harm.

But the good thing about crude here in Colorado, said Bracken of Anadarko, is it’s light crude.

Subsequent testing of several spots along the rivers that flooded revealed absolutely no evidence of pollutants from oil and gas.

Water sampling conducted Sept. 26 by the Colorado Department of Public Health showed no evidence of pollutants from samples taken at 29 sites in eight rivers affected by the flood. There were, however, high levels of E. coli in some areas, with the highest concentrations in the Boulder Creek and Big Thompson watersheds, the state department reported.

“What I’m proud of is how the industry demonstrated how prepared and responsive and transparent we were,” Schuller said. “We were providing updates three times a day, putting all of our cards on table all the time. My experience so far is people are really responding to that.”